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China's State Councillor Dai Bingguo (bottom row, 5th L), China's Vice Premier Wang Qishan (6th L), US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (5th R) and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (4th R) stand with participants in the first joint meeting of the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue for a family photo in Washington July 27, 2009. [Agencies] |
Officials from both nations played down the prospects for any breakthroughs this week on the major issues that separate the two nations, such as carbon emissions.
Wang said China's attempts to create a more open economy would help US recovery efforts.
"With the furthering of China's reform and more openness, China and the United States will have even closer economic cooperation and trade relations and the China-US relationship will surely keep moving forward," Wang said.
Obama dispatched his top economic officials - Geithner, Summers, White House budget director Peter Orszag and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke - to try to reassure China that the US will not let deficits or inflation jeopardize the value of Chinese investments.
US officials said the president's team told the Chinese that the US was committed to policies that would not fuel inflation.
They stressed that the US has a plan to bring the deficit down once the economic crisis has been resolved. Bernanke, they said, discussed the Fed's exit strategy from the central bank's current period of extraordinary monetary easing, emphasizing it was being careful to guard against future inflation.
China, which has the largest foreign holdings of US Treasury debt at $801.5 billion, has been expressing worries that soaring deficits could spark inflation or a sudden drop in the value of the dollar, thus jeopardizing their investments. Chinese officials said those concerns were raised during the talks.
AP-Xinhua-China Daily
